A New Way to Connect Your Purchases to Social Impact

This week over 300 people celebrated the tremendous progress of social enterprise in Central Ohio at Positioned to Prosper. At that event we released our annual report on the community’s progress, “Mobilizing the Community, the State of Social Enterprise in Central Ohio.” It is chock full of information about the Central Ohio social enterprise ecosystem. You can down your copy at this link.

Our new website has dozens of new features, including training opportunities and information to connect experts and investors to social enterprises.

One especially valuable new service on our website is the Marketplace. At the Marketplace you can search for local social enterprises:

by name

by whether they are offering a special deal or discount (15 deals currently)

by one of 11 product or service categories

by whether their customers are businesses (B2B) or consumers (B2C)

by which of 11 types of social impact they create

by stage of development (early stage, established or pre-launch)

by their level of transparency in profiling their economic and social impact (Community Impact Ambassadors provide the highest level of transparency).

And when you click on a business with a picture, it will bring you to a profile of their business, describe their product and social impact, and give you ideas on how you can help their business to grow.

For example, when you check “Community Impact Ambassadors” and “Offering Deal” and select the cause “Human Trafficking” you will see a picture of She Has a Name Cleaning Services. By clicking on the picture you come to their profile with full disclosure of their economic and social impact and complete descriptions of their product and their business. At the top of their profile is a coupon for 15% off your first cleaning which you can download by entering your email address.

I am excited about the potential for the Marketplace to connect more consumers with social enterprises.

Try it out and share it with your friends.

Commit yourself to buy one product or service from a social enterprise in the next week.

If you like what SocialVentures is doing to advance social enterprise, there are many ways to help. Why not start with a donation to help us support and improve the Marketplace?